Feeling the vibe of Mumbai

by Roshan
(Hyderabad, India)

The train was scheduled to leave at eleven-five pm, by ten thirty five; I had made it to the wrong end of the station. Enquiries resulted only in a vague sense of direction, “it’s right here, over there”, said someone, pointing at some lights in the distance. But the place being littered with unused tracks, half built flyovers, stagnant pools of rain water and other sorts of railway garbage; resulted in me having to ask for directions again.

I didn’t see him at first, when I looked around, for he was dressed in a dark grey sweat suit and stood there staring aimlessly at the tracks, not even smoking a cigarette. I’m sure he must have heard me approach because I was rolling my luggage along the tarmac making ugly noises. I hesitated for a second and then thought, what the hell, worst case scenario it’ll come down to mano a mano, and for some reason I was quietly confident that I could take him on.

I approached in Hindi, “bhaisab, terminus kis taraf hai?” He turned around sharply, as if startled and said to me, in courteous english, “If you have a local ticket you can walk through this platform on the left, if you don’t you’ll have to go around the back”. Well, well, well I thought, in probably no other city in India will a person on the street tell you to follow the rules, I can imagine a similar situation anywhere else resulting in the advice, “actually you’ll have to walk all the way to the back, but you might as well just cut across the local platform to get there quicker.”

This collective maturity as a city is what startles someone who experiences Mumbai, even if that person has lived in every other city in the country. While other cities get progressively aggressive, with general opinions like, “we are a fast growing city, obviously the quicker pace will lead to more aggression”, Mumbai seems to have reached its boiling point, and moved on, a long time ago. People understand the need for some order among the chaos if such a huge and diverse city must function smoothly.

You can feel the disapproval of the people around you if you as much as take an illegal u turn on a side road, something that happens approximately every ten seconds at every such turn in other cities. The incident at the train station was a climax to other, similar and varied, time trapped events that revealed many different facets of the city to me. I say time trapped because, when you think about it, you can never have the same experience of anything in exactly the same way that you did before.

Like how every time I order the Caribbean Lamb Stew at Sammy Sosa’s at Andheri, I know I’m eating one of the best things I’ve ever tasted, but other factors alter the experience slightly each time. Like what beer I’ve ordered to go with it, how hungry I am, the people I’m with, the time of day, what we did just before and what we plan to do right after. Did I pass over the subject of the lamb too lightly? Did you want to hear more? Well let me see how I can put it.

Lamb is one of those meats, like venison, that is challenging to get exactly right, and if you don’t, the dish is not “mildly raw” or “slightly charred”, but a complete disaster. Strong accents of peppers, cinnamon, garlic, mushrooms and many other Caribbean spices and ingredients seep into this perfectly cooked lamb, which when coupled with the herb rice it’s served with, produces fantastic results.

Of course I’m still selling it short and there’s much more to it than this, but if I knew all that I’d be stewing some up right now instead of just thinking about it while I write this down. Such opulent food sometimes draws my mind to the times when we need to make do with more basic fare. Eggs, bread, cheese and maggi; any school kid can come up with at least ten different permutations and combinations using these four things, each as tasty as the other.


But nonetheless, that was all we had to sustain us for the day when we all climbed into the little yellow bus before dawn broke and snored our first few hours on the way to Kashid. Mumbai has the coast, and so does Goa, which is 580 kilometers away, hence, figured a brilliant friend of mine, there must be scores of other beaches all along the coastline, not as crowded or as dirty as those in Mumbai or Goa. That’s how we found Kashid on the map, 120 kilometers from the city, easy to get to (especially by yellow bus!).

We caught our first glimpse of the much awaited beach as the morning fog cleared; it was pretty much what we expected, nothing more, and nothing less. Mostly isolated beach, few shacks that hadn’t opened yet and grayish water curling into moderate waves. A short walk deposited us at a vantage point from which we could survey our haven for the day. The sharpness of the green struck me first, nothing like the plants or trees you see in the city, these leaves almost looked like they’d been painted green.

The difference in the setting, from crowded Mumbai to here, was enough to melt your legs and plant you in the ground, trying to muster up one good reason to go back to civilization. That reason comes up pretty quickly, essentials. A ten minute walk took us towards food, drinking water and the comfort of the hammocks in the now open shacks. The rest of the day was a whiz of horses, friends falling off horses, friends playing Frisbee, friends sucking at playing Frisbee because of the wind, the tiny waves, the not very tiny waves and the gradual progress from dusk to dawn.

We got back to Mumbai with over an hour to spare before most restaurants shut down. Exhausted and covered in films of beach sand, the convenience of meat stuffed in a roll beckoned us at Hangla’s. “The taste of Kolkata” it claimed, this spiked me up a bit because I had sampled my first genuine Bengali food just a couple of days ago at Calcutta Club and was surprised at how I didn’t mind so much mustard in everything and actually liked the food quite a bit.

On my first visit to Mumbai, (apart from a family vacation when I was around 8 and so don’t remember much), I was asked how long I was staying, “four days” I said, “You should stay for a couple of months”, I was told, “you should see how Bombay Country works”. This term makes more and more sense to me every time I visit the city and find new ways in which it is so different from other cities, while actually being the biggest melting pot in the country.

Where in the world you come from doesn’t matter, you can be a part of Bombay Country as long as you feel the vibe of the city and go along with it. It seems like this city has it all sorted out; order where order is required, like those neat queues at bus stops, and chaos where that is the only way, like at the local trains. Both modes of transport, both very instrumental in transporting the Mumbai working class from home to work and back, but yet so different in this one aspect.

Scores of people shoving about, poster ads for tuitions, bank loans, pest control; sleazy messages with phone numbers at the bottom, the smell of fish rank in the air. Not exactly every persons ideal start to their day, so what do you do when this is where you have to spend the first half hour or more of your day, every day? Like most regulars, just pop in your earplugs, listen to your favourite music and stand there with a content grin because you know you are living the life that the thousands of people who flock to Mumbai everyday hope to be living someday. A place to stay in the suburbs, a job in the city and the energy of Mumbai, what’s a smelly train ride once in a while?